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Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis
Greetings and salutations, mon amis. I have a simple mission with this page. What is that, you might ask? The answer is no doubt an intriguing one: to accomplish two tasks comprising of: #being random, and #''actually making sense. This may come as a bit of a shock, as the two seem to contradict another, don't they? Random, as a rule, cannot make sense, right? I hereby introduce a newly founded concept pertaining to randomness known as the '''Dictionary Postulate'. Say you are randomly skimming through a dictionary, blindfolded, using only seven fingers, upside down in a space module, aiming to point your finger down upon a random word. On your first try, the word is "buggered". Now you repeat the entire process again, making sure that your finger lands in the most random place possible. The next word your finger happens to land upon is "buggery". The two words are almost identical in spelling, meaning, and innumerable other aspects, not least of which being grammar. It's almost funny how planned-out it seems. But it isn't. It's random. And if it was random, who are you to question its meaning? That in mind, I'm setting off to fill up this page with random things that pop into my head (consider it a personal narrative) that actually make sense, are as gramatically correct as I can make them, organized, and perhaps even (shock horror) useful. What madness is this? Marry, there's random method in't. Of course, I'll probably tend to write about stuff that I like/know about/follow/imagine/watch/stalk/hunt down/eat/eat seconds of/read/form unnecessary postulates about, that being human tendency (although I may not necessarily be human, even though I occasionally display human qualities - I spend too much time down on this little rock) and that might not seem entirely random, but see the Dictionary Postulate, above. Along the way there will be random appearances from Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis the bizarre armadillo. Why? I don't know why. Simple as that, frankly. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Now let's begin. Herpetoculture: A History Herpetoculture. Funny old word to start us off, isn't it. So, what the blazes does it mean. Well, before we answer that let's back up a bit. For some reason people have always tried to lump together snakes, frogs, lizards, salamanders, turtles, and crocodiles into one big category. Why; I'll never know, because there are important physical and phylogenetic differences. But people do it all the same. This dude Carl von Linne (you may know him as Carolus Linnaeus from such movies as The Man Who Made Taxonomy ) lumped em into a term called herptile. The term is still used today, although often abbreviated as "herp". This causes much amusement when people confuse it with herpes, or derp. So what's herptile? Herptile comes from two words. The first is ἑρπετόν. It's Greek, don't worry. It comes out roughly as herpeton. Basically translates to "creeper". Apparently they didn't know that alligators can really hustle when they need to, and also that the term would quickly become disassociated with animals and onto some stupid video game. The second word is reptile, for obvious reasons. Anyway, somebody thought herptile was a good name, and so the term herpetology was coined: the study of reptiles and amphibians. The lumping phenomenon continued. I remain depressed because of this, but you don't want to know about me. You want to know about herpetoculture. I'm getting there. Hold your horsepowers. So herpetology is the study of reptiles and amphibians, and people who do herpetology are herpetologists. Basically, these people go out in the jungle to catch deadly herps, preach to the masses telling them to not make herps extinct, and use snake venom and frog slime to cure cancer. All in all, a pretty cool job, eh? People, herpetologists or not, have always seemed to like stuffing herps in glass tanks and shoeboxes and keeping them as pets. In the olden days, you'd catch em yourself, and proudly display their cage on the mantle. That all changed in the 1940s, when some guy bred wild-caught corn snakes himself. One of the hatchlings turned out to be a rare albino that was pretty much unobtainable through the wild, and all the other herpkeepers were like MOTHER OF GOD I WANT ONE and so the herp captive breeding business was born. This new trend became so popular that another dude actually decided to give it a name, drawing inspiration from the name herpetology. And so herpetoculture was born. Yes, all that text just to define a word that you hadn't heard of before. You should expect a lot of that sort of thing with this page. Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis says so. The Moft Lamentable Tragedie of Villiam Shakefpeare You know what the sad thing about Shakespeare is? Everybody buffs him up. Seriously. Everybody who doesn't read Shakespeare thinks that he's a great literary genius who made his works to be held up on high till the end of time. Those who do read it realize how unremarkable it really is. See the paradox? All the Shakespeare fanboys aren't actually fanboys at all. The haters aren't actually haters at all (though hate they may still). Their roles are reversed, which kind of defeats the purpose of those definitions anyway. Calling it us and them is much simpler. I mean, look at Romeo and Juliet. People who never read it: IT'S SUCH A ROMANTIC TRAGEDY ISN'T IT SO SAD THAT THEY DIED IT'S SO TRAGIC THEY LOVED EACH OTHER BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. People who actually have read it: It's just two sixteen-something kids that really don't think things through and need some lessons about abstinence. Or Macbeth. Never-reads: THE WITCHES TEMPTED HIM TO DESTROY THE KINGDOM GOOD THING THAT OL' MACDUFFY REVENGED US ALL AND MADE THINGS RIGHT WHOOOOOO. Have-reads: The witches saw the future. The witches told Macbeth the future. Macbeth was stupid. Nuff said. Let's face it, if Shakespeare was alive today he'd be totally writing for the soap operas. This reeks of General Hospital, man. In fact, the only decent plays are ones that nobody cares about. Take Timon of Athens. You've never heard of it, have you? (It's not about a meerkat, before you say so.) Even if you have, somehow, miraculously heard of, there's an exact chance of zilch that you've ever read it. I have. It's genius to read, and even more genius to see on stage, with a steampunk setting and exploding walls. And no, I won't tell you about it. Look it up for yourself. It makes things all the more surprising once you find it. I shall now henceforth list out Shakespeare plays as they come to mind from the top of my head, so you can read them and decide if they are soap operas for yourself. *Pericles *The Winter's Tale *Macbeth *Timon of Athens *King Lear *Romeo and Juliet *Henry V *Henry IV all three parts *The Merchant of Venice *Midsummer Night's Dream *Julius Caesar *The Comedy of Errors *Oh yeah, Hamlet. *Much Ado About Nothing *Robin Hood *Venus and Adonis Alternatively, you can take my word for it and not look anything up at all now that you've wasted twenty seconds of your life you can never get back peering at this list. It's up to you, I guess. I don't care. Doesn't matter to me. Nothing really matters to me. Any way the wind blows. An Opinion on the 2012 National Hockey League Lockout Will this madness never cease? I watch hockey. It's the only sport I really like, aside from curling. I mean, I'll watch other stuff every now and then (tennis, ping pong, etc.) but only because a) I'm bored or b) it's the Olympics. Hockey I like. Devils FTW, you know? This lockout stuff has happened before, but I feel all this is just getting a bit ridiculous. These people get paid to play games, which gives the managers and executives more money, and you're not letting them play games, which means less money for the managers and executives. To me that's just sort of a no win-no win situation, if you know what I mean. Imagine what would happen if the NFL went into a lockout. There would be rioting in the streets, destruction of cities, and mass casualties. I imagine that sort of thing is happening in Canada right now. But since there's no new hockey on TV, I can't get anything about or relating to Canada to confirm this. What have I been doing to counteract this excuse of a lockout? Well... Cynically Celebrating Thanksgiving, That's What What can I say. Thanksgiving's fallen into the Dark Side. Think of the olden days. You'd wake up to watch the parade, enjoy a full three hours of actual live programming, and then head over to the family's house in order to meet up, have a good turkey, and chat. The next day you'd relax with a full belly of food and maybe go shopping if you felt like it. Now, you wake up at eight-thirty in the morning, watch the parade which consists of mostly commercials and the rest consisting of bad pop stars who badly lip-sync to their music played over the loudspeakers. Santa gets 30 seconds of airtime. When you head over to the relatives' place for dinner, they're all watching football and generally being unsociable to each other. No sooner than you leave the house after eating a couple scraps of half-cooked turkey from the frozen aisle of the supermarket, you have to tackle insane traffic in crowds to get into the Black Friday shopping spree that doesn't actually happen on Black Friday anymore. Of course, if you don't live in America you don't have any of these problems, and so I envy you for that. No hard feelings though right? However, while I was cooking for the Thanksgiving dinner today (yes I actually help with that) the butter blew up in the microwave for the first time in like ever. I swear that the Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis was responsible. SKYFALL I watched the new Bond film Skyfall today.? Here I shall give my scrumptdidillyumptious opinion upon it: It was pretty good I guess. Fiction Narrative Who knows what the man can see. He strives to attain what he wants to know, and yet he does not succeed. This is not because of extenuating circumstances - it is his own devising. He refuses to see, rather, and that is what he has feared most. To look upon that slip of paper - what power would he gain, what knowledge he would attain! It would set him up to the level of the gods. And yet he cannot do it. All he must do is just open the slip, but he does not, because he is afraid. It was enough of an effort to decide that it was time. He had readied himself - though not without incident - and, almost reluctantly, made the journey to the imposing hallway. The room had been menacing and massive, his footsteps echoing through the walls and ceiling, like some forgotten spirit waiting to be heard. And there, at the other end - the black machine. He needed to walk there. Cautiously, he had made his way up the steps to his destiny. He had approached it, and read the label. He did what the label told him to do, and the paper slipped out. Nobody questioned him - the machine was surrounded by emptiness today. There was only him, and nothing else more mournful. And then, he had cracked. Under a sort of panic, he slipped it into his pocket, and left in a mad hurry. He could not read the paper now, read his destiny to himself and him only, because he, quite frankly, chickened. He ran out, went home, and tried to forget about it all. But his mind kept it in its grasp, and day and night, all he could picture was the perilous, palpatating paper, persistent. That was a long time ago. And, today, he finaly decided to learn what he had hid for so long. But he was chickening, yet again. This time, however, he supressed it, because he was wiser now. He was able to repress the fear building up inside him, resist the temptation to drop, run, and curl up into a little ball on the street somewhere. It was an intense mental effort, though you wouldn't imagine it to be. And then, all at once, he opened the slip, and read. PARAPROPALAEHOPLOPHORUS SEPTENTRIONALIS He paused for a moment, and he knew nothing, responding to nothing, simply a nothing of nothing caused by a surprise, a disbelief, something he did not expect, even though he had expected every single circumstance in the known universe. So, upon learning his fate, he decided to purchase a plane ticket to Buenos Aires. THE TWELFTH DOCTOR What follows is my literal thought process at around 7:23 PM GMT on August 4, 2013, while watching the television. Please proceed at your own risk. Are you ready for this? Are. You. Ready For This? Right. Getting anxious now. Peter Davison and Bernard Cribbins are done. So was that fan that totally screwed up his facts in front of about 16 billion people live on TV. Moffat's on. Telling us nothing as usual. That's fair. Come on, come on! Do it. Is this it? I think this might be it. Right. Omigod this is actually it. The new Doctor - The newest favorite Time Lord in Doctor Who - The successor of Matt Smith - The one, the only, and the best - Is - PARAPROPALAEHOPLOPHORUS SEPTENTRIONALIS!!! Hold on, I think I made a mistake. One mo. Ah yes. Right. Ahem. The new Doctor - Omigod they're showing a shot of his hands. He's married. Looks older. Interesting that they went with an older one, seems promising. The new Doctor - The one we've all been waiting for - Is - What. What. WHAT''.' '''OH MY GOD, IT'S PETER CAPALDI!!!!! IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!! IT'S PETER CAPALDI!!! Okay now. Calm down. Get yourself together. Okay so. Bookie favorite actually won. Never seen that before. Must be some sort of tinfoil hat conspiracy. Capaldi's appeared in the Whoniverse before. No biggie, Colin Baker did the same in Arc of Infinity back in the 80s. Hang on, this is different though. he's done it twice. Once in The Fires of Pompeii, once in the third series of Torchwood. So the new Doctor has, at various points in his Whoniversal career, narrowly avoided being choked to death by a giant volcano and probably got scarred in the process, and killed himself and his entire family after basically condemning half the world's children to death by giving them up to a naked alien bird who wants to use them for drugs. Never had that happen before. He's a fan. Good sign. Widely acclaimed actor. Also good. Notable for a role in which pretty much the entirety of his dialogue consists of rampant swearing. Should be interesting. We have the Twelfth Doctor. Coming at Christmas 2013. In the meantime, we have John Hurt to deal with. Exciting times. ... AAAAAAAAAHHH IT'S PETER CAPALDI This thought process has continued to repeat itself since, with no end in sight. On the Subject of Dissection (Part I: Description and Tools) Alright, let's take a wide left turn and talk about dissection. First off, we need a definition of the word itself. The wonderful thing about the Dictionary Postulate is that it is named after the dictionary, which contains a definition for almost any word you can imagine. But because it has been since replaced in human civilization by the Great God Wikipedia, we'll go there instead. In other words, dissection is about poking at dead things in the name of science. And yes, it is as good as it sounds. Let us therefore assume that, having heard that dissection is as good as it sounds, you (the reader) want to take a shot at it, because you like to take a shot at anything that is as good as it sounds. In that case, welcome aboard, soldier. There are a few things you need to know beforehand: *Put your guns away. Just because you are taking a shot at dissection does not mean you are actually shooting it. We are not trying to kill the dissection subject, they are already dead. Thank you. *Take the directions you are given as gospel. Imagine that you are dissecting a bomb. One false move and poof, what remains of you is ejected out into the stratosphere. *Dissection is not vivisection. If you are interested in vivisection and its related practices, you may want to contact your nearest mad scientist and apply for an internship. Alternatively, you may find the book Son of Frankenstein; or, the Post-Modern Prometheus in your local library. Before you begin a dissection, you must acquire the following tools: *Something disposable to work on. Seriously, you need this. It's a helluva job to get bodily fluids out of the carpet, even with a steam vacuum. *A pan, to contain your subject. It will help to keep excess body parts in one place. I tried hacking at this cow's heart one time and I'm glad I had a pan. This cow must've been diabetic or something, bits of things were clogging up the arteries and flaking out and...yeah. *Pins, to restrain your subject. If it has legs, the legs will flop about unless they are pinned down. *A scalpel, for making inscions. Unless you expect to cut through the subject's flesh with your own teeth, you will need one of these. *Scissors, because sometimes a scalpel just doesn't cut it. *Probes, for you to poke at the dead thing. This is what dissection is all about, so expect to use many of them. There are two types, straight and curly. Get a few of each. *Forceps, for extra sophisticated poking. *A magnifying glass, if you really need one. If you are dissecting a small thing, you will probably really need one. *A jar with formaldehyde in, should you decide to keep your subject after dissecting it. You can display it proudly on your mantelpiece, sell it at a yard sale or to a pawn shop, or even open a traveling carnival and tout it as a long-extinct mythical creature. *A dead thing, because otherwise there's really no point to all this. You can acquire dead things from many sources. Your best bet is to get one sold for dissection, but since you're the one who's going to be hacking it up I don't really care. Find a dead thing in the woods maybe. Roadkill, if it's intact. Don't eat the roadkill, though. Especially not Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis. Those things carry leprosy. Seriously, I was in Missouri once and there were signs up saying "don't eat the armadillos". Leprosy is nasty. *The Hand of Science. It'll help, trust me. Now that you have your supplies at hand, you are ready to begin. Stay tuned for Part II, where the unknown awaits. Discovery Channel's Shark Week is dead to me. I never really understood the point of Shark Week to be honest, but at least the channel had actual worthwhile programming. Now it's all reality TV and it sucks. Mythbusters isn't even on that much anymore. My childhood is dead. Surely, in Discovery Channel's most popular, long-standing annual event, there would be some hope of redemption. Then they go ahead and air this: And my reaction is this: It is one of the worst pieces of television I have ever seen. And I have seen the SyFy Channel. It's just...bad. I think it was supposed to be a documentary, but it doesn't deserve that title. It doesn't even deserve the label of mockumentary. There was nothing even that said it was fake. The disclaimers describe it as a dramatization of real events, no matter what Discovery Channel has to say on the matter. I can't tell which is worse: the fact that such a horrendously obvious fake documentary is trying to pass itself off as real, or the fact that gullible people out there might actually believe this. *&%#^$*@!)*^#%^&%&(*&(##) It starts off with some laughably terrible found footage of a fishing boat in April 2013, which gets attacked by an unseen predator (as this point tantalizingly unnamed, except in the documentary's title) off the coast of South Africa. There were no survivors, conveniently enough. Next, a team of heroic marine biologists arrive and actually screw it, I'll say it now. The acting in this is unbelievably horrendous. The characters are trite and cliched. Heck, we even have good scientist (who believes with all his heart that the Megalodon is out there somewhere) and bad scientist (who is skeptical about the Megalodon and seems to therefore be painted as the antagonist despite, y'know, thinking like a scientist should) on board. Anyway, this team hears of the incident and gets the footage, automatically assume that a shark was responsible, realize that big boat = big shark, and as a result good scientist proceeds to lead them on a search for the Megalodon, a giant prehistoric shark, even though it went extinct millions of years ago and its survival is about as plausible as the Loch Ness Monster (i.e. nil). Suddenly, "evidence" for the Megalodon appears out of the blue in the form of eyewitness accounts and photographs: ^This hilariously photoshopped photograph in which the shark, the dying whale, and indeed the entire ocean appears to be computer generated. ^This hilariously photoshopped dead and deflated whale which has washed up onto the beach with no tail, all its CGI guts spilling onto the ground in a neat and organized fashion. Theory has it that some modern sharks aim for the tail in order to mortally wound their prey, and therefore Megalodon must have done so as well, which means this is amazing evidence. There's also an "amateur video" of this that is even worse. And just when you thought that Discovery Channel couldn't possibly screw this up harder: ^They bring World War II and Nazis into it. After spotting a "Megalodon" (a couple of blurry CGI fins shrouded in darkness) on an underwater government surveillance system that is freely available online, good scientist concludes that the Megalodons are getting angry due to climate change (or something) and proposes a plan to tag one of them so they can track its movements. Bad scientist is naturally skeptical of this idea, but is immediately rubbed off. After testing the tag system on a measly great white shark, the plan begins, and at nightfall about 80,000 pounds of chum is thrown overboard in order to attract the Megalodon. (I may have misheard this. It's still laughable.) A few hours later, a large shape appears on the sonar, and good scientist throws bad scientist in a shark cage to tag the Megalodon. Chaos ensues, as something knocks the boat and churns the water. It vanishes as soon as it came, and having tagged the Megalodon (despite not being able to see things down there), bad scientist has reformed and is no longer skeptical. However, the tag loses its signal as the Megalodon goes deep underwater. Good scientist remains ecstatic, and the program ends on a high note for the believers. Basically, the entire attitude of the show is "MEGALODON EXISTS AND IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH US WELL TOUGHIES". Bad plot, bad acting, faulty premise, fake program pretending to be real, and an excuse to cash in on the giant shark factor for viewing figures. Dethhhhhhpicable. Why I Like Barry Black I like Barry Black. You probably haven't heard of him before. Let me explain. Barry Black is the current chaplain of the US Senate. Now, regardless of your religious or political beliefs, I think we can all agree that the 2013 government shutdown is a pretty bad idea. And I think we can all agree that we want it to end as soon as possible. Well, Barry Black feels the same way too. And he expresses this, in a very polite and unassuming way, by publicly bashing the senators during his opening prayer delivery to the Senate each morning. And he delivers alright. For example, let me list you some words he used in Thursday's delivery: "madness", "smugness", "selfishness", "pride", "attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable". Right there, in no uncertain terms, he's calling out on all the politicians and he is doing it hard. Also, he has a bowtie. How cool is that? :D July 2nd Hello gentlemen And ladies It is July 2nd And today we will talk about "This Day in History" "This Day in History" For easiest access we will consult the Great God Wikipedia to find out what happened on "This Day In History". Let us begin. On "This Day" in 1504, Bogdan III the One-Eyed became Voivode of Moldavia. Yep. Literally a cyclops. You can't make this stuff up. On "This Day" in 1777, Vermont became the first American territory to abolish slavery. Now I want to just stop here and point out that Vermont is pretty awesome. Sure, it may all be maple syrup and mooses (mooses? moose? moosii? meese? seriously, what the heck is the plural of moose? lemme look it up. mosinee? MOSINEE? seriously? kay. whatever. forget it. i'm not going to bother) up there - but you know, mooses (dammit, not again) are pretty awesome. Plus the whole thing with civil unions, excellent teacher:pupil ratios, and being a very pretty state in general. Also, Hawkeye Pierce lived there. That's an instant win. On "This Day" in 1881, U.S. President James Garfield was shot, eventually dying from his wounds in September. This man had an awesome beard. Many famous men in history were known for their awesome beards. On "This Day" in 1897, Marconi patented the radio, but nobody cares about Marconi. On "This Day" in 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean. Her raft the Electra would later be found in 2009 on a geologically unstable island full of highly evolved crustacean superpredators. I am totally serious. Somebody wrote it down. On "This Day" in 1962, the first Walmart opened in Arkansas. It is said that a beam of light opened up from the sky, and when it receded, Walmart had taken its place upon the earth. A statue of Our Good Lord Walton rested out front. And the world would never be the same again. On "This Day" in 2014, Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis looked up at the reader of this page and made a comment about their mother. 2,745 lawsuits in total were filed against the armadillo this day. Category:Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis Category:Pages by Styracosaurus Rider Category:Dictionary Postulate Category:History Category:Herp Category:Derp herp Category:The Scottish play Category:PATRICK STEWART Category:Doctor Who Category:Hockey Category:MONEY! Category:Cynical ranting Category:Thanksgiving Category:Fried Turkey Category:Bond. Covalent Bond. Category:Meaningless yet meaningful drabble Category:PETER CAPALDI Category:Wikipedia Category:Science Category:Handy Lists Category:The P.T. Barnum strategy Category:TV Category:Bad TV Category:Discovery Channel Category:Jumping The Shark Category:An excuse to use Sherlock memes/GIFs Category:Politics Category:Fak Politics Category:I wear a bowtie now. Bowties are cool. Category:Cyclopses Category:Cyclopsenes? Category:Here we go again, (muffled sigh) Category:M.A.S.H Category:Awesome Beards Category:Crustacean Superpredators Category:Walmart Category:Praise be to Lord Walton, our Chairman and Saviour, for through His symbol the Yellow Smiley He provides us with cheap Stuff and glorious weekly Sales. Hallowed be Thy name, Lord Walton, and Amen. Category:Unnecessary gratuitous praise of Walmart